At least KD didn't require any Easter dinner. 

April Fool's Day from the sofa

I hosted an unexpected visitor to my family Easter eve dinner this year, a big, boxy arrival by the name of KD Graphite.

It all began a couple of weeks ago, when I optimistically decided that a new sofa would be just the right finale for my spring cleaning. My existing sofa, a queen sleeper, would be much more at home at my daughter’s house, where a sectional couch was way too much dominating her living room. Plus, the fold-out bed would help with her occasional overnight guests.

I naively assumed it would not be too difficult to find a basic brown sofa in a city once known as the furniture capital of the nation. I was wrong. Driving around to the few furniture stores left after economic downturns and big-box competition, I discovered two disconcerting facts:

 1. Inexpensive sofas are not intended for comfortable sitting and the colors and fabrics offered are less than ideal if you’ve got three cats and a dog who shed.

 2. Expensive sofas are, well, too expensive and often too big and fancy for a casual cottage.

So, I began online shopping for my sofa. I figured I could assess comfort by reading customer reviews and would just have to take a leap of faith that the color depicted onscreen would be accurate.

I wound up at Walmart. They had a lot of sofas in my price (cheap) range and also offered free shipping. My eventual choice was a button tufted sofa in a color called coffee. As I love to drink coffee, this seemed like a natural fit. The sofa was also offered for nearly $300 more on Amazon, so I figured I would be getting a good deal.

Well, maybe.

Order placed, I received an email letting me know that the sofa would arrive before April 1. That’s April Fool’s Day, which should have been a tipoff.

I then received a call from the delivery company that transports Walmart products locally telling me that the sofa would arrive on April 1. Still in time for my Easter festivities but, again, April Fool’s Day.

Bright and early on the appointed day, the sofa arrived. I should have listened more carefully when the driver told me the most common issue with such deliveries is that the wrong color gets dropped off.

The sofa arrived in one big box and as I dragged it from the garage into my sunroom, I noticed that the box was labeled “KD Sofa Graphite.” Uh oh. Opening the box, I discovered that not only was the sofa gray and not coffee but that it was also the wrong sofa. Completely incorrect.

So I called Walmart.com customer service. The representative was very apologetic and refunded a handling cost of about $40. My main question was, can I get this thing out of my house before my guests arrive for Easter eve dinner? He said he would start the process for getting the correct sofa delivered and that the delivery company would receive directions to pick up the incorrect one.

The only thing he neglected to tell me was that it can take several days for the delivery company to receive the directions.

Meanwhile, I received an email where I needed to confirm that I was returning the incorrect sofa. Only problem was that the incorrect sofa listed was actually the correct sofa that I had ordered. So I had to call customer service again, explaining that I was very confused, because it appeared I was now returning my coffee sofa. The representative assured me that their paperwork showed that the wrong sofa was delivered, but admitted “if I didn’t work for Walmart I wouldn’t understand this either.”

I decided to give it one more try to get KD Graphite out of my house before Easter so I called Walmart.com customer service again and was again told that it would take several days for the shipping company to receive the paperwork. They refunded another $40 or so for my inconvenience. Which didn’t exactly get the big box out of the house.

So now I’ve decided to just wait until the correct sofa arrives before KD departs. Might take a week, but who knows. Maybe I could ask Walmart to just let me  donate KD to my daughter.

April Fool, that’s me.

Postscript (and kind of a long one), but at least it's not lost in transit
Well, as it turned out, KD really wore out its welcome. Optimistic that the boxy intrusion would be gone before a second weekend, I received an email from Walmart confirming that my coffee sofa would be delivered on a Friday.

But this was a very suspect assertion, as I hadn’t heard from the delivery company. When I called them, they said the sofa had just arrived at their dock and wouldn’t be leaving for my house until after the weekend. Oh, and they had received no request from Walmart.com asking them to pick up KD.

So, thus ensued a more than hour-long call with a number of employees at Walmart.com., all who told me that my original idea – to send KD packing to my daughter’s house – wouldn’t work because they needed it returned. No exceptions. The final person I spoke with gave me a 30 percent discount on the sofa I had ordered and shortly thereafter the order to pick up KD mysteriously arrived at the delivery company.

Along the way, I really wanted to email the CEO of Walmart.com to let him know that his organization could use a healthier dose of employee empowerment. But not only was his email address not available on Walmart’s website, his own employees didn’t seem to have it. One employee suggested I Google him to try to locate it. Huh? Isn’t this guy your boss but you’re asking a customer to Google him?

Anyway, everything seemed set for a Monday delivery. It was the 13th of the month, yet another unlucky number. But I was pretty confident that it was time for "coffee" and that KD would finally be evicted. 

It didn’t take long for Walmart.com reality to rear its ugly head. During the weekend, I received an email ordering me to return KD by May 1 or I would be charged for it. Well, that wasn't very nice, considering I'd been trying so hard to get it out of my house.

But the grand finale in this comedy of errors came from some hapless employee informing me that "coffee" had been lost in transit, with a refund for the entire amount being processed. My response to the email was brief but to the point: “Lost in transit? It’s being delivered tomorrow.”

And sure enough, the sofa arrived bright and early. I was relieved to see “coffee” written on the box because it meant that it was likely the correct sofa. And I was delighted to bid a not so fond farewell to boxy KD.

But I needed to call Walmart.com yet again to let them know that there was no lost sofa, just a few lost minds. I knew to ask for “Tier 2” customer service, which is apparently where the snafus go. Just as I suspected, when the sofa wasn’t delivered on Friday, coupled with KD being picked up at the same time, it had short circuited Walmart.com’s inefficiency process. Or, as Mr. Tier 2 explained it, when an employee saw that the sofa hadn’t been delivered on Friday he or she assumed it was lost in transit. Who could have imagined that a delivery AND a pickup could actually happen on the same day! 

But aren’t there notes on all the screw-ups, I asked Mr. Tier 2. He muttered something about reminding employees to read the notes before issuing refunds. Then he huddled with his supervisor to figure out what they should do. That turned out to be another partial refund for me, plus I haggled for a $65 gift card.

Which brought the amount I paid for the sofa to around $50. Which would have resulted in far fewer missteps if Walmart.com had just agreed in the first place with my proposal to send KD to my daughter’s house. But hey, they made $50, which will probably be just about enough to tape up KD’s box again.



Sofa, so good

At least the new sofa arrived with no damage and I put it together in about 15 minutes. So far it is holding up well, but I’m keeping all the paperwork in case it ever decides to become lost in transit. And as for me, I'm pretty sure Walmart.com and I are never ever getting back together. 

 

 

 

    

Good reads while waiting for the thaw

It has been a chill winter, but the library has been mainly do-able in the deep freeze. Here are some recent good reads as I wait for the river to thaw:

 - A memoir by Senator Elizabeth Warren. Didn’t know much about her, but infinitely impressed by her lifelong zeal to achieve and make a difference as a mom, grandmother, lawyer and politician.
 

- A memoir by Sonia Sotomayor. This Supreme Court justice definitely had quite the life in her extended Puerto Rican family and obviously made the best use of her brilliant mind along the way.
 

- A memoir by Oksana Marafioti. This is a story about growing up in a Russian gypsy family and the related challenges in adapting to American life as an immigrant. While adopting my daughters in Russia, I would often see gypsy adults and children begging on the streets, and this narrative explains their cultural heritage.
 

- The “chocolate mystery” series by JoAnna Carl. Set in west Michigan, these fun books revolve around a chocolate shop and crimes that engage the owners, ready or not. Chocolate recipes and chocolate trivia make these books a definite escape from the winter doldrums.   

 

Color me checkered and musically chaired

Being virtually homebound as I took care of my 88-year-old ill mom this month gave me plenty of time to also focus on a major decorating goal for my cottage. I want everything to go with everything, to have a unified color theme from room to room.

So I decided to begin with a new bluesy bed covering that would finally allow me to use a chair that had been kind of drifting aimlessly from room to room. I liked this arrangement so much that I bought identical bed linens for the guest bedroom so that a second chair could also find a new home.

Now, with two chairs removed from my study, I could put a chair I had been using in the living room back in its original spot. It made my mom cozier and warmer, with better access to television sound and picture as well.     

Next, came the living room. I’ve been going for a river cottage theme, since I live across from a river, so first I found an outdoor furniture coffee table online that would complement the color of the other furniture and look appropriately casual. With a little adjustment of the couch and a side table, I made room for two chairs.

The chairs I found at a nearby furniture store. I loved the cottagey check of the fabric, but the only problem was that I couldn’t figure out what color the check actually was. It looked blue/gray in the store and was described as brown online. One salesperson said it was black and another one said it was charcoal gray.

So I checked out one of the chair’s checked pillows overnight. Taking it home, I was happy to see that it would fit in beautifully. Only problem was, I still couldn’t figure out what color it was. But I ordered a chair pair anyway. They arrived today and all I had to do was screw in the legs and push the chair back into slots provided on the chair seat. And I even used two of the four pillows on the couch.

Sheers at the windows completed this exercise in musical chairs. And everything pretty much goes with everything now. Whatever color it is.  

Looking great at 88, despite
a bout with the
flu and pneumonia

'Well' -- it's a new year's resolution
Before, during and after the holidays, the operative word in my family was “sick.” First, my granddaughter came down with the flu and, later, croup. Then I got the flu on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, my daughter in Italy, along with my brother and sister-in-law in northern Michigan, all came down with bronchial infections. Then my 88-year-old mother caught the flu, followed by pneumonia. She’s been recovering with me ever since.

It’s especially challenging living an hour away from my mother’s home and her doctors. At first, she thought a Sunday visit to urgent care near her home and an antibiotic prescription would be enough. But when she continued to get more congested, I continued to get more worried and brought her to my home.

Another visit to urgent care resulted in another antibiotic. Then, when she started shaking with chills, followed by a fever, we made a 3 a.m. dash to a hospital emergency room, where they formally diagnosed the flu and changed her antibiotic again.

As her cough worsened, I decided we needed to revisit the emergency room, where, with a third chest x-ray, a spot of pneumonia was detected. This time, she was admitted to the hospital, which was so full that she wound up in a joint rehabilitation unit. The main bed and chair in the room had alarms on them to prevent a fall from a joint replacement.

After two days of excellent nursing, cuisine fit for a hotel and some reviving IVs, she was discharged with a strong antibiotic, inhaler and steroid to knock the pneumonia out. Only problem was that the inhaler made her head sweat. And then she got pressure in her chest which resulted in a call for paramedics. Once they determined her vital signs were not concerning I called her hospital doctor and we mutually agreed to remove the steroid. Voila – no more pressure.

I have made so many trips to my neighborhood pharmacy that the pharmacists recognize me and are always willing to discuss drug interactions and the best cough medicines – suppressant or expectorant?

Now, after a visit to her primary care physician back home (and a quick take down of her outdoor holiday decorations by me), she is on the mend. She is taking yet another antibiotic to address the cough, catching up on much needed sleep and eating better. She goes with me to babysit my granddaughter in the afternoon and has helped me shove furniture around as I do some housebound-fueled room rearranging. And, she was most happy to get a permanent.

So now we are all using hand sanitizer and trying to avoid coughers and sneezers. It has got to be a happier new year, come February.

Bringing fa-la-la-la-la home for the holidays

My general goal when decorating for the holidays is “Christmas in every room.” And even though I moved into a significantly smaller home late last year, I never scrimp on my trees, greens, lights, linens, china and three china Christmas villages meandering through it all. 
 

One of my much-loved collections features dishware with the traditional English Spode Christmas tree design. I add some pieces each year and the display stays in my china cabinet year round. This year, I even added a Spode shower curtain to cover the nook where my washer and dryer sit.

Trees are another favorite and moving to my cottage required a smaller Christmas tree, so now I have a decidedly slim pencil tree shining in my living room window, complete with paper gift tag decorations featuring, you guessed it, the Spode Christmas tree. Two tabletop trees oversee the sunroom, each laden with beautiful paper mache ornaments I found at thrift stores. More greens, live ones this time, flow out of a stocking basket hanging on my fireplace and outdoors I put greens and red ribbons in two hanging pots once containing summer flowers. Free and festive!

I have so much fun decorating every year that I decided to share a little of my fa-la-la-la-la with my friends and family, so I hosted a tea/open house earlier in the month. Little scones, brownies, cookies, crackers and cheese and fruit were the main attractions, along with assorted teas and coffee.  My barking dog went to doggie daycare, so it was truly an afternoon of comfort and joy. And I didn't bake a thing.

Now, with my Christmas letters written and cards in the mail, I can focus on cookie making with my family and trolling the toy aisles for the puzzles and books my granddaughter loves. I’m even attempting a craft project – mason jars circled with ribbon that looks like Santa’s belt and stuffed with bite-sized licorice.
The only thing missing is snow. After the snowiest November on record, we don’t yet have any white stuff to cushion a reindeer landing.

But Santa always perseveres.



This is one of my favorite photos of my dad,
taken on Christmas day when he had just
received some new earmuffs. My new pearl
necklace is a nice embellishment.
 

A pearl of wisdom for my father 

I’m approaching a bittersweet birthday this month. It has not escaped my attention that my father was the same age as I will be when he died of lung cancer in 1994.

So when I mark my birthday this year, I will make sure I will continue to try to live as he would have wanted – with meaning, substance and joy and appreciating every day as a gift.

Speaking of gifts, my dad was all about Christmas. He was the first one awake every Christmas morning, making sure Santa had placed our stockings in front of a cozy fire in the fireplace and arranging presents around the tree. There is a photo of my brother and I coming down the stairs on Christmas morning our eyes wide with the realization that Santa had, once again, been very generous.

Dad always gave me a book for my birthday and on Christmas, complete with a few of his wise words on the front page. He knew how important reading was, for education, career and all-out enjoyment and he was so right. I continue to check armloads of books out of the library every year. And my greatest reading achievement to date has been making it through the complete Sherlock Holmes series which dad gave me, a very thick book indeed.

Dad also liked to shop for other Christmas presents on Christmas eve day, and he frequented the Salvation Army store for all sorts of unique finds. I remember one very vibrant gift – a dress tiered in ruffles of many layers – that probably would have worked well for Halloween, but was a bit of a fashion conundrum for a self-conscious teenager.

I always give myself a birthday gift and this year I decided to somehow honor my father in the process. Back in my teen years, one of the most popular gifts among my friends was a single pearl on a necklace. I knew this would be too much to ask for in my single-wage-earner family. Even this year I didn’t know if I could find anything within my very limited non-necessities budget.

But I wandered into a lovely neighborhood gift and floral shop recently and there on a shelf of clearance merchandise I found it – a tiny gold shell with a pearl inside and hanging from a gold chain. It’s from a company that talks about living “simply, to purely focus on the things that matter most. That means listening to your heart following your dreams and finding yourself.”

Those words could have spoken by my dad. And I will remember them whenever I wear “his” necklace.

Currently Reading:
The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A couple decides to open a used-book store in an Appalachian coal town.
Kisses from Katie: A young woman gives up her comfortable life to move to Uganda and help children there.
Hush: Another mystery from the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine.